# How to avoid double posting



## Zoltea (Dec 11, 2010)

This will be a rather simple guide. I've noticed double and triple posts en masse due to server errors. There's a simple solution to avoid multiple posts.

After posting, it may sit there loading and loading endlessly or simply hit the well-known "server error 500". A lot of people refresh when they encounter this hitting "resend" when asked. This is how you end up with multiple posts.

I'm sure most of you have been on the forums index page enough times for your computer to have a near-flawless cache save of it. If this is so, before refreshing after encountering a server error, go to the forums index in a new tab and check to see if the post actually went through. If you do not find that topic on top with you being the last poster, then go ahead and refresh the server error and resend. If you do find your post there though, simply close out the tab of the topic you were posting in. This should help clean up the topics a bit. ^^

EDIT: Ironically, I got a server error when posting this and did have to resend.


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## Tailsy (Dec 11, 2010)

Unfortunately, most of the time you get posts sent through normally and they will _still_ double-post. So that's... not really all that helpful.

EDIT: also, it's really not hard to delete double-posts. :C It's not a big deal.


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## Zoltea (Dec 11, 2010)

A lot go unnoticed for a while though, so it's better to avoid it altogether. Admittedly I haven't had any double posts from the first send.


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## .... (Dec 11, 2010)

Zoltea said:


> A lot go unnoticed for a while though, so it's better to avoid it altogether. Admittedly I haven't had any double posts from the first send.


http://forums.dragonflycave.com/showthread.php?t=11636


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## Tailsy (Dec 11, 2010)

Admittedly, he DID have to resend this one according to the first post.

But personally, if it goes unnoticed it's not a big deal. ARGH THE SERVER FUCKED UP AND MADE YOU POST TWICE!! The mods _will not infract you_ for that, so just delete it or we'll probably find it later and delete it. It's fine.


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## Harlequin (Dec 11, 2010)

Yeah I usually just like ... leave my double posts alone because ... idk I don't really care about them. IT HAPPENS SOMETIMES k


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## Butterfree (Dec 12, 2010)

A lot of the time it happens when you use Quick Reply, especially if your post is relatively long; it will wait for a certain amount of time for the AJAX to report success, and if it doesn't, the forum will instead try to actually physically submit the form. If the AJAX post actually did go through, it will get posted twice.


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## Superbird (Dec 12, 2010)

A lot of the time with quick replies, it just goes to the "Go advanced" page saying "You can only post one post every 20 seconds. Please try again in 15 seconds". Then, in order to make it show up I hit the reply button and then delete the post before that. If you, mods, go to my novel's thread, you'll see one deleted post for every chapter before chapter 20. I'm not even kidding. 

In other, unrelated news, earlier I was getting a strange error page saying it couldn't find the server or something. It was not a 500 error, and it loaded about eight and a half times quicker than a 500 error. Also, at the top it sometimes said "Server shutdown in progress" along with a bit of other text that probably meant something but I'm not a programmer yet so I wouldn't know. What exactly was that about?

And finally, the 500 errors themselves. Does anyone know why exactly they are occurring so often? Because two months ago there were none.


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## Superbird (Dec 12, 2010)

...And posts don't show up, either.


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## Superbird (Dec 12, 2010)

...And posts don't show up, either.


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## Vipera Magnifica (Dec 12, 2010)

^ How ironic.

So I guess I'm not the only one getting all the 500 errors. Yesterday, I couldn't even access the forums.


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## Superbird (Dec 12, 2010)

^Ditto.


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## Tailsy (Dec 12, 2010)

Yes, Butterchuru's been trying to fix the problem, but apparently it's not the hacks so she has no idea what is going daaaaaaan!


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## Butterfree (Dec 12, 2010)

My best guess by now is that it's just excessive traffic on the server.


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## Eifie (Dec 12, 2010)

Forum said:
			
		

> This post is a duplicate of a post that you have posted in the last five minutes. You will be redirected to that thread.


Is that new? :o


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## surskitty (Dec 12, 2010)

Tailsy said:


> ARGH THE SERVER FUCKED UP AND MADE YOU POST TWICE!! The mods _will not infract you_ for that, so just delete it or we'll probably find it later and delete it. It's fine.


We also don't infract non-accidental double posts if both posts have content and it's been more than, say, a day.


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## Vipera Magnifica (Dec 12, 2010)

^ Judging by the 21 minute delay between posts, I'm guessing that was intentional?


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## Tailsy (Dec 12, 2010)

What? What double post? I don't see it... surskitty _never_ does such imperfect things...


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## opaltiger (Dec 12, 2010)

Emerald Espeon said:


> Is that new? :o


No.


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## surskitty (Dec 12, 2010)

Zangviper said:


> ^ Judging by the 21 minute delay between posts, I'm guessing that was intentional?


No.


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## Wargle (Dec 12, 2010)

for like, three days straight, I was being sent to a page with the vBullrtin logo saying the site ha a fatal error and was removed. I panicked.

Then I got those that happened when fprums.dragonflycave.com crashed for a day, so... Its been hectic getting on. EVERY OTHER PAGE I GET A 500


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## ultraviolet (Dec 13, 2010)

does anyone understand that glitch that happens when the forum says there's a second page of a thread, so you click it and it just takes you back to the first one? like there's a post on the second page but it's invisible. o.o


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## Tailsy (Dec 13, 2010)

:c But ultraviolet posted, forum! I wanna see!!


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## opaltiger (Dec 13, 2010)

I think it's related to deleted posts.


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## Superbird (Dec 13, 2010)

^I speculate that that's the cause of invisible posts: Someone double-posts, then deletes the most recent one?


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## Kratos Aurion (Dec 13, 2010)

Superbird said:


> ^I speculate that that's the cause of invisible posts: Someone double-posts, then deletes the most recent one?


No, that's not it. It usually happens when there _is_ a duplicate post, and one of those duplicates ends up deleted later after someone else posts to get the thread back to normal. It's probably more along the lines of the same AJAX issue Butterfree mentioned, though I wouldn't know for sure. Certainly I've seen it happen/had it happen in threads that had no deleted posts at all beforehand.


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## Vipera Magnifica (Dec 13, 2010)

Well, luckily the forums seem to be better now. I haven't had many error messages tonight.


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